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This two-day introduction to Linux broadens attendees horizons with a detailed overview of the operating system. Attendees learn how to effectively use a Linux system as a valuable tool. They get familiar with the architecture and various components of the operating system, learn both graphical and command line tools, and learn to do basic networking. This class is scheduled for May 13th – 14th, 2010.

Desktop

The IronKey TAB runs a Linux based operating system which in turn runs a dedicated Firefox based browser. It takes a number of steps to prevent key-loggers from intercepting passwords and has an optional virtual keyboard for non-keyboard password entry. It also makes use of the IronKey’s integrated RSA SecurID to provide login tokens, but adds an extra, variable obfuscation to ensure that any malware spies will see an invalid token.

In some ways, the IronKey TAB is similar in intent to the process of booting a Live CD of Linux and performing banking from the read only Live CD environment, but without the need to reboot the host system and activated only when the stick is plugged in and the stick itself is not compromised.

I wish to migrate to Ubuntu 8.04, because I think it would benefit my programming education, and I would get some needed computer literacy skills, but I believe I’ll have problems with Linux from the first time I booted the Live CD – no, it’s not about my files – I don’t have much to migrate:

For the past few years, I’ve always tried to use Linux because I wanted to see what a freely created, communally built operating system could do.

Right now, I’m using Mac OS X on my laptop, because I can. Once again, it’s an operating system built by Apple (which just this week is in a face-off with a journalist who bought one of its prototype phones and published details of its hardware).

But, honestly, I think I prefer Linux: my MacBook’s fans are whirring off their axles in an attempt to chill OS X’s overenthusiastic feature set, whereas with Linux the whole thing stayed cool and responsive.

Server

Nebula runs Eucalyptus using Linux and the XEN and KVM open source hypervisors. It also makes use of MySQL and the open source RabbitMQ messaging system, used to communicate between virtual machines and to push information down to end user browsers, according to Rabbit Technologies CEO Alexis Richardson. Richardson’s outfit was recently purchased by VMware’s SpringSource division.

Graphics Stack

Nvidia announced a few days ago, on its forum, a new version of its proprietary driver for the Nvidia graphics cards. Nvidia 195.36.24 adds support for new GPUs, and fixes a few issues. But the most important thing is that Nvidia 195.36.24 has support for X Server 1.8.

While compilers are the company’s bread and butter, PathScale is also looking to push open source and help to develop better GPGPU drivers for the open source community – so much so, in fact, that the company is offering free Nvidia Fermi graphics cards to “qualified open source developers and researchers” looking to write open drivers and compilers.

Applications

So you’ve done it, you moved over to GNU/Linux (or you made your move a while ago). Everything works and you’re happy with it. Well, for a while now, I’ve been asked the same question on many occasions, a question I did not previously have a good answer to, “Can I use IrfanView with Debian [Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.]“.

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There is even plugins for burning files to an optical disc, and uploading images to Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa Web Albums. Right from inside gThumb.

And just for the record, gThumb starts in — well, I’d like to time it, but it starts to fast. gThumb starts in less than a second on my single-core system, I can only imagine what it’s like on an Intel i7.

Google

Stick a fork in the desktop, it’s done! Recently Google demoed a port of Quake II to WebGL and HTML5, showing that even first person shooters are suitable applications to run in the browser. While the tide isn’t going to turn all at once, it seems more likely than ever that a browser-based desktop is a viable option and ultimately the way many users will experience all applications.

As discussed in our article “Why Build a Linux Firewall”, there are many advantages to having a custom-built firewall appliance in your home. While these Linux distributions are easy to set up and have nice User Interfaces, they still have some problems. Not every feature of Linux is exposed in the GUI, so while these firewalls are very capable they don’t allow for simple customization, which is probably best for the home user.

Games

Perhaps we will have to keep building systems from parts and just avoid the huge cards. Folks laugh when I tell them I set up GNU/Linux terminal servers with on-board video or a $40 video card but that’s all most of us need and the thin clients have their own cheap, built-in cards and do not use the video card on the server at all.

It seems to me the gaming market is over-sold. Only about 10% of PCs are used steadily for gaming and by a narrow group of users. Most of the world uses PCs for text, images, video, audio and not gaming, so why spend $billions producing chips that are not needed? What is needed are such chips on servers and billions of single or dual-core chips for PCs, thin clients, netbooks, smartbooks and smartphones, few of which have any need for six cores.

Jan Mette (funkyou) passed away of as-yet unknown causes. Jan was a major contributor to the Arch Linux community, the creator of KDEmod and a founding member of the Chakra team. Our sincerest condolences go to his family, friends and the Chakra team.

Citrix CTO and longtime Xen proponent Simon Crosby said he is unfazed by Red Hat’s decision to drop the Xen hypervisor from its enterprise Linux software and focus its virtualization efforts around the KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) hypervisor. Crosby claims the move won’t harm Xen’s standing in the virtualization market.

Debian Family

Kontron announced two rugged, fanless PCs designed for DIN Rail mounting. The ThinkIO-Solo and ThinkIO-Duo include Debian Linux, 1.06GHz Intel Celeron or 1.2GHz Core Duo U2500 processors, up to 1GB of RAM and 4GB of flash storage, a CompactFlash socket, two Ethernet ports, and support for DVI-I and VGA monitors, the company says.

With today’s announcement, NorthScale Memcached Server is now available via easily downloadable software packages for Windows, Red Hat Linux, Ubuntu and other Linux distributions supporting the .rpm and .deb package formats. Downloads are available at www.northscale.com/get_started.html.

Ubuntu

With Ubuntu 10.4 there is a lot of good and it begins with the installer. One of the issues I’ve had with Live CDs is that a new-to-Linux user has trouble understanding the concept of the live CD. Ubuntu has solved this by not really stressing the “live CD” aspect. Instead they have a bootable CD that, upon boot, right away presents you with two options:

* Try out Ubuntu
* Install Ubuntu

It can’t get any clearer than this. No more will new users load up a live CD and wonder why there is an Install icon on the desktop. This is just one more step towards that user-friendly Nirvana that all OS developers are searching for.

The Ubuntu Linux 10.4 release codenamed the Lucid Lynx is set for general availability today, providing users with new desktop, server and cloud capabilities. Canonical, the lead commercial sponsor behind Ubuntu, is also highlighting the broad ISV support for the release.

The Lucid release is particularly important for Ubuntu as it is the project’s first enterprise Long-Term Support (LTS) release since the 8.04 Hardy Heron release in 2008. Ubuntu LTS releases come out every two years and offer three years of support on the desktop and five years on the server, while regular Ubuntu releases only come with support for 18 months.

Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu project, this week announced that the next version of Ubuntu will incorporate a global menu bar for all of its applications. The new universal menubar will only be enabled by default on the netbook edition of Ubuntu 10.10 “Maverick Meerkat”.

Linux Everywhere

The NAS is based on nettop hardware, so it’s no surprise to see that there is custom Linux software powering the device. This works very well in the background, but it also means there is huge scope for improvement in functionality via firmware updates. There is even a VGA port for advanced NAS diagnostics should you feel the need to delve a little deeper.

We’ve seen pico-projectors with integrated low-power PCs before, but Chinavision’s CVOB-E72 goes one step further. As well as a VGA resolution projector, you also get a Linux-based OS with WiFi b/g, a battery apparently good for up to 2hrs runtime, and a wireless remote control with a full QWERTY keyboard.

Development

The deployment of Linux on the desktop and in the server room is well served by the general-purpose distribution. In the embedded world things are very different: although Linux is used widely, the concept of the general-purpose distribution is much less in evidence. Many vendors rely on forked board support packages or home-grown builds to create their systems, effectively creating their own customized distribution in the process. While embedded platforms represent a challenge to the traditional Linux distribution, there is no shortage of community projects to support the development of embedded Linux systems.

Enea announced it has expanded its relationship with NetLogic Microsystems, which acquired RMI Corp. last year, along with its Linux-ready, MIPS64-based XLP, XLR, and XLS multicore, multithreaded processors.

Mentor

Mentor already is looking well beyond just the chip. Its Nucleus RTOS and Linux tools strategy are playing a big role in the company’s move into a variety of communications devices. Case in point: The deal with Freescale that was announced this week to provide specific features in the Linux to support the silicon is a first for an EDA company.

LynuxWorks

LynxSecure 4.0 lets developers run modified guest OSes, such as Linux or LynuxWorks’ own LynxOS-SE real-time operating system, in a para-virtualized mode that optimizes performance. Alternatively, it can also virtualize unmodified OSes such as Windows, for complete compatibility, the company says.

The developer of the LynxOS real-time operating system has so far escaped the wave of acquisitions in which Intel Corp. acquired Wind River, Cavium Networks bought Montavista and Research in Motion bid to buy QNX Software Systems. “I think the play now is in the ancillary parts of the software stack such as virtualization and security,” said Singh in an interview at the Embedded Systems Conference.

Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NYSE: TXN) today announced Linux kernel support for its TMS320C64x™ digital signal processors (DSPs) and multicore system-on-chips (SoCs) targeted for applications such as communications and mission critical infrastructure, medical diagnostics, and high-performance test and measurement. As customers move towards open source as a key element of their products, application developers can benefit from the availability of Linux on TI’s high-performance DSPs by having less software to develop, and focusing more on differentiating features and software in their applications.

CodeSourcery, a leading provider of tools for professional embedded C and C++ developers, is working with Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) to port the GNU Toolchain to TI’s C6000 family of digital signal processors (DSPs) and multicore system-on-chips (SoCs).

odeSourcery, the leading provider of GNU tools for professional embedded C and C++ developers, announces the immediate availability of the spring 2010 release of Sourcery G++ for ARM®, ColdFire®, IA32, MIPS®, Power Architecture®, Stellaris® and SuperH® processors. The latest release features enhancements that boost application performance and make it easier to get started with GNU/Linux application development.

Wind River

Just how fast is ultra-fast? According to a Wind River release, when running on Linux on an Intel Xeon 5500-based reference board, the new Network Acceleration Platform managed iPv4 forwarding at a rate of 21 million packets per second – and that’s using just four threads.

ARM

Atmel is using this week’s ESC (Embedded Systems Conference) in Silicon Valley to launch two ARM-based system-on-chips (SoCs) featuring hardware encryption and authentication. The SAM9G46 and SAM9M11 support 256-bit AES, triple DES, and SHA, and they’ll run Linux on 400MHz ARM929EJ cores, the company says.

Zoran Corp. announced Linux-based firmware for its ARM-based Quatro family of system-on-chips, which target touchscreen-enabled printers and scanners. The Inferno firmware offers an API, printer engine driver, print language support, and other tools for developing Linux applications on Zoran’s ARM9-based Quatro 4300 and dual ARM11-core Quatro 4500 processors, both of which include printing-optimized DSPs.

Android

As FroYo has not even been released yet details regarding Gingerbread are extremely scarce, however we have heard that Gingerbread will be based on Linux Kernel 2.6.33 or 34, whether it will be Android 2.3, 2.4 or 2.5 is also unclear.

Making up for that, in part, will be more high-profile open source applications on top of Android. One pundit complained recently that there were so few Android open source applications. There are actually a fair number of them, but pundits rarely can get past brand names. And, truth be told, there are few brand-name open source projects on Android today. That will change, in part due to Android’s market presence (e.g., Mozilla’s Fennec will be reasonably popular by 2013) and in part due to changing technology (e.g., more brand name apps will be written in HTML5 and therefore will run on Android).

Sub-notebooks

A small button above the keyboard lets you quickly power the netbook up with a more basic Linux-based operating system – called ExpressGate – for speedy access to the internet. Windows 7 is also installed. Other features include 500GB of online storage, boosting the 250GB of local hard drive space. Three USB ports are also in place.

Until now, that is. The Joojoo, from upstart company Fusion Garage, quietly launched a couple of days ago on a pre-order basis. The Linux-powered, Wi-Fi-enabled, 12.1-inch capacitive touchscreen tablet has a 4GB SSD and – unlike the iPad – USB ports. It’s going for a pretty reasonable £319, and orders placed now will be dispatched by May 12th.

The mediafront platform is an open source (GPLv3) front end media solution for the web. Through its integration with popular content management systems, it employs an innovative and intuitive interface that allows any website administrator to completely customize the front end media experience for their users without writing any code!

In addition, this platform offers two open source media players that can be used free of charge on any website. These media players can be used either as a stand alone solution, or within any content management system. One is flash based and the other is HTML5/jQuery based.

BT is seeking to increase innovation in its IT functions through the gradual introduction of open source methods.

Jeremy Ruston, head of open source innovation at BT, told a meeting at the BCS last week that BT had undergone a “profound philosophical change” by making all its software development open, “just as it is, in fact, at Google”.

A recent Aberdeen Group Inc. survey found 48 percent of open-source BI users have annual revenues of $50 million or less, whereas only 37 percent of the users of traditionally licensed BI products are that small.

Of the more than 300 organizations surveyed, almost 90 percent said they were using open-source BI software alongside more traditional BI software. Cost savings, better hardware utilization, and innovation were cited as the top three motivators for adding open-source to their software portfolio.

The developers of x.264, the open source version of the h.264 hi-def video codec used by YouTube and many others, have taken the first step towards building a free Blu-ray creation toolkit. They’ve been able to make the codec compliant with Blu-ray video.

If peers are helping peers meet the critical and sensitive needs of their organizations, say for example at HIMSS – why wouldn’t it be the same for our software development? Open source may be a deviation from conventional thought, but today it is playing an active role in meeting these requirements and helping organizations to scale.

Open-source software offers a better alternative: what you see is what you get, the customer can fully evaluate a technology to understand what is offered, what it does, how it can be improved, and how to fits it into a workflow.

The best way to ensure the spread and success of open source is to introduce the next generations of users, and potential contributors, to open source at an early age. But this isn’t trivial. Aside from software suitable for young users, it takes a lot of support materials to teach a class and spread the word to educators. One of the better documented attempts at reaching students is Máirín Duffy’s eight-session Inkscape class and K12 Educator’s Guide to Open Source Software.

The problem is I don’t know if I agree with this. I don’t subscribe to the 1000′s of elves in cyberspace fixing bugs in open source code. I think the fact is that a very small number of code contributors actually work on any given open source project. Yes Linux and Apache are the exceptions, but by and large most open source projects actually have a tiny number of code contributors.

Observing leading platform companies such as Google and Apple reveals a number of tactics that can be employed across a wide segment of the wireless industry. Google, in particular, has been successful in making an impact via its much-hyped, open source, Android platform. At the heart of this platform is an operating system built on the foundations of Linux open source software code, and as such, Android is available to anyone to use, build, and develop without incurring license or royalty payments.

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Compared to Apple’s ecosystem, the Android developer community is drawing on traditional open-source development strategies: networks of lead programmers collaborate across the code’s core software interfaces. Like Apple, Google distributes free software developer kits and application programming interfaces (APIs) to facilitate community-based development. More users and program usage will spur more innovation and improve its ability to quickly and efficiently resolve quality issues. In return, greater exposure of the Android platform will likely arise and heighten its potential for becoming a de facto wireless standard.

The First Apache Open Source search technologies conference for European developers takes place in Prague this month, presented by Lucid Imagination.

The Conference will showcase achievements by customers, developers, technologists and search innovators and is running as a not-for-profit venture, with net proceeds going to The Apache Software Foundation.

What is Open Source?
Open source is the free sharing of technological information, according to Wikipedia. Starting in the early 2000s, a number of companies began to publish a portion of their source code to claim they were open source, while keeping key parts closed. This led to the development of the now widely used terms “free open source software” and “commercial open source software” to distinguish between truly open and hybrid forms of open source.

Mozilla

The N900 is my handheld of choice and as I’ve stated before it is by far the web browsing phone currently on the market. The most wonderful thing about FOSS is choice, just like a desktop computer the N900 provides you with a variety of web browsers to choose from and the Mozilla cooperation choose Maemo as the first platform to release their mobile browser for. I’ve been using firefox as the primary browser on my N900 since just prior to it’s 1.0 release, the following are my summations of what I think of Mozilla’s mobile browser.

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All in all I think firefox mobile is the best browser currently available for the Maemo platform and thanks to the browser-switchboard it is the default browser on my device.

The Nokia N900 handset is based on the Linux-based Maemo platform and is also noted to be dubbed as a pocket computer. With the trendy phone, users can seamlessly carry out all their online activities from their mobile device itself. Now Firefox is all set to grace the handset terrain by unfurling Firefox 1.1 Beta onto the Nokia N900.

Facebook’s ambition to become a default identification platform for the web could be threatened by an in-browser identity management system from Mozilla. The firm behind second-placed browser Firefox is testing an open-source system called Account Manager, which unlike Facebook’s platform will allow users to switch between identities from different services.

Databases

A company has been formed to supply commercial support to users of open source Cassandra, a database for sprawling Web data. Social networking sites Twitter, Facebook, and Digg are among the prominent users of Cassandra, with Twitter storing 15 million tweets a day.

Matt Burkhardt offers those and other services through Impari Systems Inc. at 502 Fairview Ave. The company uses free and open source software — software liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, study, change and improve its design through the availability of its source code.

Oracle

Compellent is adding integrated file-level access to its SAN product, and using Sun’s open source ZFS to do so.

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He was confident that the lawsuits over NFS between NetApp and Sun, now Oracle, were very low-risk, saying that in ten years of open source software lawsuits had raised their heads but nothing had happened. Also: “Oracle is very committed to its open storage acquisition.”

CMS

FreeGPLThemes.com aims to be a hub for all GPL licensed codes and artworks, such as free wordpress themes. It is hosted on a US cloud server to provide high speed download of GPL wordpress themes. The web-team of FreeGPLThemes.com is based in Indonesia to maintain low operation cost.

The company sells a customized version of an open-source online learning platform called Moodle, while many of its larger competitors sell software based on proprietary systems. Open-source software is typically developed in a decentralized way through peer-group collaborations, and it can be freely appropriated by developers who wish to modify it.

Business

People used to be apprehensive with open source solutions as they felt they were complex. However, this is not exactly true. Open source solutions are not just confined to Linux platforms, there are solutions available for Windows platform as well, which are very simple to install and get started with in a wizard based format. And when you contemplate about implementing ERP or CRM solutions for your organizations, you can very much consider open source solutions rather than going for expensive proprietary solutions. If you are clear about the organizational business processes and how you want to define or chart out those with ERP solutions, then you can give an open source solution a try. Today’s open source ERP or CRM solutions offer almost all the functionalities for every organizational function that any proprietary solution would offer.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

“My daughters are both active on the web on social networking; my son does hack in PHP,” blogger Robert Pogson began. “One out of three is OK, I guess.”

Women do have definite advantages in FLOSS, Pogson added, “because merit is the deciding factor in advancement.

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The world definitely needs more free-thinkers, but “it’s not just hackers who are free-thinking,” Montreal consultant and Slashdot blogger Gerhard Mack pointed out.

“One thing that has always got me was the number of people who think they are free-thinking simply because they are anti-establishment or copying people they think are intelligent,” Mack explained. “Free thought is more than just taking a contrary position — it’s analyzing for yourself when the established ways of thinking are right and when they are wrong.”

Nearly six weeks after version 4.0 arrived, the Squeak developers have announced the availability of version 4.1 of their open source implementation of the Smalltalk language and environment. According to the developers, the latest release combines the license change from the previous release with the development work from before the re-licensing process took place.

When the Greater London Authority, a city-wide body, started to look at free and open source software they had little to learn from other levels of British government. The pace of adoption has been glacial in the UK, despite recent interest in open data. Having rolled out cost-saving open source technology for some back-office systems and web sites, the GLA has found that partnership across the wider public sector introduces the biggest barriers. The need for government bodies to interface with each other has held back the aspirations of the UK’s open source action plan.

Open source advocate Nat Torkington and Rugby World Cup 2011 marketing and communications manager Shane Harmon are among the speakers at the fifth annual ALGIM (Association of Local Government Information Management) Web Symposium in Wellington early next month.

Licensing

The developers of HUBzero announced its open source release. The software is a platform which its Purdue University creators says allows for easier use of clusters and grid computing, making it “a sort of a Swiss Army Knife for deploying and accessing computational research codes.”

Openness

Open-source and DIY robotics should be the ideal match, but the expense of robot hardware often puts it out of reach for all but the most deep-pocketed enthusiast. Five years ago Francisco Paz decided to produce not only his own robot, Qbo, but to open-source the project so that hopefully the cost of entry would be lower for anyone else wanting to follow in his footsteps.

Satellite engineer Song Hojun has developed a DIY personal satellite that can be launched and operated at a reasonable cost. Hojun’s Open Source Satellite Initiative makes it possible for regular people to develop and eventually launch their own satellites. He gave a presentation demonstrating his satellite at the Machine Project last week.

I heard Ben speak about the RepRap, along with many other programmers, scholars and activists committed to making all kinds of information available to be freely used, reused, and redistributed, from “sonnets to statistics, genes to geodata” as their website puts it.

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As with so many advocates of free and open source solution, Ben and his friends are also planning to turn engagement into action by offering to help groups that want their own RepRap get off the ground by printing off the plastic parts needed to build your own.

Don’t be fooled. The way the media plays the story, it was a wave of racist, anti-immigrant hysteria that moved Arizona Republicans to pass a sick little law, signed last week, requiring every person in the state to carry papers proving they are US citizens.

I don’t buy it. Anti-Hispanic hysteria has always been as much a part of Arizona as the Saguaro cactus and excessive air-conditioning.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

May 4 is the “Day Against DRM”. Talk with people about it. Tell them they have options. Tell retailers you do not want that stuff. DON’T BUY IT. You will be getting less than you want.

My objections to DRM have nothing to do with respect for copyright. I believe creators of works should have some rights to how they are used. I disagree with the length of copyright terms. I see no reason why patents, rights to things tangible, are less than rights to things intangible but copyable. That is arbitrary law in my view. There is no good rationale for it. Why should not the period of copyright be the same as patents, 18 years or so? This thing about offending old people by propagating their works during their lifetime is silly. People make their choices in life for better or for worse. We should not, as a society support some people’s choices more than others. That is not fair.

Copyrights

So, it appears to me that cheap, legal copies made in another country covered by the Berne Convention could be imported to Canada legally. If M$ caused the copies to be made legally in a country in which Berne applies, they cannot go after an importer for violation of copyright. Similarly, if M$ make copies in a country not covered by Berne, then later importation are equivalent to copying. I am not a lawyer so do not rely on this. It is my opinion based on the plain reading of the law. Whatever the EULA says does not trump copyright law when it comes to finding infringement of copyright. M$ may have grounds to sue for breaking a contract but usually that provision just involves termination of the contract.

Checking some prices: Malaysia “7″ Ultimate $206 and $205 in Canada

So, concerns about M$ not making any money in far-flung reaches of Earth are over-blown.

The criminal enterprise known as Microsoft finds itself embarrassingly exposed in the courtroom, for the IRS belatedly (decades too late) targets the company in an effort to tackle massive tax evasions

A look at some of last week's patent news, with imperative responses that criticise corporate exploitation of patents for protectionism (excluding and/or driving away the competition using legal threats)

Vista 10 to bring new ways for spies (and other crackers) to remotely access people's computers and remotely modify the binary files on them (via Windows Update, which for most people cannot be disabled)